My “ordinary life” alarm has just gone off. Thirsty. Sleep so elusive at night, seeks me now in the morning when I should be bright eyed and bushy tailed. Another week. Yesterday’s unfinished chores. Many intentions uncompleted: no tray of muffins. No writing of a fictional scene in my newly started commonplace book. Laundry unfolded. Did watch TV when I said I wouldn’t. Stayed up past midnight. Did not pleasure self. I did get my sewing done, and showered, and was in touch with a few old friends. I did my mid-year passion planner and looked up grave costs and finished my note about looking for a new job. I read in my hammock, and brewed tea. I repotted some of the plants and called my parents. In short, it was a very full day. No need to overstuff it with the unaccomplished. Yesterday Siobhan mentioned something I had no memory of happening, me larking about with a harp bag pretending to be a humpbacked shark when we were in graduate school–10 years ago. And it occurred to me my life has changed so much that those memories now take up a very narrow band of life’s whole frequency, but perhaps for her and for the others it’s a much bigger part of who they still are. Maybe not. But perhaps so many of the attention-getting and emotion-driving factors of my life right now will similarly recede into curious relics in another 10 years. Occasionally I imagine myself older and I’m flooded with an image of kindness and calmness I don’t yet feel I’ve achieved. This fills me with hope and with a kind of satisfaction or a sense of completion–but I know too that this kindly older self isn’t automatic, I must create the conditions for her: I must work to be kind and calm, and self-accepting. But the clarity of the vision gives me hope.